


Steal Your Heart

by chii_kakumei



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Phantom Thieves - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 02:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15451416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chii_kakumei/pseuds/chii_kakumei
Summary: The mysterious woman known to the public only asGhost Girlis a world-class Phantom Thief, stealing priceless treasures from private collections the world over. Aoi is the younger of the Zaizen siblings, co-founder of the world's most esteemed private security service. It's to no surprise that they start working the same jobs.





	Steal Your Heart

“I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’ve taken up this case,” the man says to her, rubbing his hands over his gold watch nervously, eyes darting about to every shadow as if he’ll find something evil lurking there, ready to part him from his riches.

Aoi smiles at him very blandly. “We’ll do what we can, but there’s no one who’s successfully defended their belongings against Ghost Girl.”

“Oh yes,” the man says, very twitchily. Aoi kind of wants to snap at him to stay still. She’s not very good with the twitchy clients. When she can, she prefers to leave them to her brother, but this case is personal. The man continues, “but you’re the best guards this country can provide. The best money can buy! 

“Well,” Aoi says, trying not to sigh, “The service fee isn’t refundable, even if Ghost Girl gets away.”

“Oh,” her client says, “I trust she won’t.”

Aoi doesn’t sigh. She forces herself not to. And she definitely doesn’t say that it’s that very cockiness that makes Ghost Girl choose her targets the way she does in the first place. It is, after all, not any of her business how her clients act, just what they pay her for off the bat... meaning her presence and her guards and a security plan for whatever Ghost Girl has let her calling card for.

This time it’s a painting. Aoi has only seen it once before it was hidden away in its safe for that extra little bit of protection, but she knows that it’s beautiful. It’s a landscape of a place far away that Aoi will probably never visit, and supposedly it’s a family heirloom, though Aoi doesn’t believe that for a second. This man is new money, no matter how he tries to pretend otherwise. No pretend family lineage can hide the way he’s striding around without an inch of gravitas.

“Ghost Girl has been running free for two years now,” Aoi replies, “but we’ll do our best to finally catch her tonight.”

“Good,” says the man, “Good, good. Then let’s settle the matters or the plan, again, if you don’t mind.”

Aoi takes a very long blink, begging herself to stay patient, and prepares herself for a very, very long night.

 

The alarm call comes quickly, tonight. Ghost Girl’s calling card says she’ll come at eleven-thirty and escape by midnight, and the first sighting comes at eleven-thirty in the dot. Or, to call it a  _ sighting _ is wrong. It’s actually a blip in the security systems built into the house, the call going out to them by radio from the control room.  _ Ghost Girl is on the premises. _

Aoi doesn’t worry, not yet. She’s faced off enough times against Ghost Girl that the relevant media has practically started to call them rivals. Aoi laughs at the sight of those words every time. As if they could call each other  _ rivals. _

“She may be observing us,” Aoi explains under her breath to her client, keeping her mouth out of sight of any vents or places where security cameras could easily be hidden. “Clients like to stay near to where their treasures are hidden, and it gives away their position. Then should we put phase two into action?”

“Oh yes,” the man says, far too loudly for Aoi’s liking, “lets go.”

Aoi nods and steps off, saving the roll of her eyes for after she’s passed the man and he has no way of seeing. 

They head down into a spacious room on the first floor. It’s not quite a gallery and not quite a storage room, but a display room for the fine art this man has gathered that he’s, for some reason, seemed unworthy of main display. It’s packed to the brim with cabinets and display cases, and Aoi grimaces at the ridiculous display of luxury. The room is dimmed and there are no windows, only a few orange lights in each corner of the room illuminate it. For a few tense minutes the man paces around, and Aoi carefully listens to the situation reports through her radio before silencing it.

Since the initial disruption, there’s been no sign of Ghost Girl. That’s not a good thing, exactly, but it’s certainly according to plan. 

And then, there it is, a flutter of movement in the darkness. It’s not the client, whose returned to fidgeting in pace at Aoi’s side. Instead it’s further in the room, and there’s absolutely no mistake, because Aoi sees a telltale flutter of silver right where the hidden safe should be in the bottom of a cabinet.

Aoi grins and flips the switch.

The lights all snap on at once, drowning Ghost Girl in the bright white of them. Her black suit that blends into the shadows so well is now like a beacon of her presence.

“So we meet again,” Ghost Girl says, turning to Aoi. Her voice is steady, not even the slightest bit worried at having been caught. Though her lips are covered, Aoi  _ knows _ that she’s smiling by the way she gives a friendly little wave. And the little wink she gets just solidifies the fact.

“Give up now,” Aoi says, stepping forwards in time with the other guards. “This time you’re surrounded, Ghost Girl. You’ve lost.”

“Have I really? After all… how many times does this make? I’m starting to think you’re making excuses to see me.” Ghost Girl lifts her hand and a wire shoots from it, lodging into the ceiling and pulling her straight up towards the roof. The guards rush towards her, but Ghost Girl uses the sudden momentum to swing, landing atop the cabinet. And with a final little wave, Ghost Girl leaps back up into the vent system atop the safe.

“The vents!” Aoi yells, then repeats into her radio, “seal off the vents!”

The return comes panicked, a moment later, “We can’t do that! Something is jamming the security systems!”

“Impossible,” her client says, “those are state of the art! Hack-proof!”

Aoi clicks her tongue, resisting the urge to tell him that nothing is impossible for a skilled enough hacker, then turns on her heel and dashes back into the stairwell. She’ll never catch up to Ghost Girl in the unfamiliar vents, but she’s studied the blueprints of this house for hours upon hours. It’s seared into her memory, just like Ghost Girl’s habits. She prefers to start high and work her way down, by tonight there’s no further down to go- so up to the very top it is.

The client runs after her, wheezing as she takes the curling stairs two at a time, out into the second floor of the mansion. It’s not a moment later that Ghost Girl tumbles gracefully from the exact vent Aoi thought she would, landing easy on her feet, a testament to what a veteran she is at this. But that’s not what Aoi’s attention should be focused on, because strapped to Ghost Girl’s back is, unmistakably, the painting. It’s covered by a sturdy black cloth, but it’s exactly the right shape and size. Ghost Girl makes no mistakes on the job, so it  _ has _ to be.

“How?!” The man gasps out, still breathing hard. Before them Ghost Girl dances out of the way of Aoi’s lunging grasp and begins to run up the hall with silent feet.

“The same trap won’t work on me twice, Zaizen!” She calls over her shoulder, and Aoi doubles her pace to try and catch up. No, Aoi thinks, she hadn’t expected Ghost Girl to really believe that the painting had been placed in its usual safe. But how she’d ever figured out that it had been placed in a safe in the vents- how she had gotten  _ into  _ the vents- it wasn’t something that she could have known by herself.

Aoi isn’t surprised. Instead she just follows Ghost Girl to the very end of the hall and into the far stairwell.

Ghost Girl is running herself into a trap, Aoi thinks as they turn the stairs up onto the third floor, as Aoi pushes her way through a still-swinging door, catching sight of Ghost Girl’s long hair vanishing into a door not even halfway down the long hall.

Except Aoi isn’t naive enough to believe something like that. Everything in the world could be poised against her, and Ghost Girl could still escape unscathed, treasure in hand and the satisfaction to show for it.

After all, Aoi thinks, she’s done it a dozen times before, slipping away from not only her, but every security company money can buy.

Aoi sprints down the hall and pushes her way into the room that she knows from studying the blueprints is an bedroom, unused. She bursts inside, ready to apprehend Ghost Girl, but all that’s left is a fluttering curtain and a breathless Aoi, staring at the moon and the stars as they shine down through the open window. She races to the balcony, searching for a rope- but there’s nothing. 

“My painting,” the man cries from behind Aoi, apparently having finally caught up, but she hardly hears. She’s just left staring out into the vast yard of the estate, watching the guards below run their patrols frantic, fanning out to cover the yard in its entirety.

Ghost Girl is gone, the painting vanished along with her. Aoi stares out at the sky, at the city lights brighter than the stars along the skyline, and allows herself the tiniest of smiles before she turns back to her client to offer her stern-faced condolences. 

 

The way back home is long, and it just grates on Aoi after what a long job this was. She’s certainly not getting a bonus from it either, given what a fit that man has thrown at the disappearance of the painting, but Aoi hardly cares. No one has ever caught Ghost Girl, and Aoi knows with almost utter certainty that no one ever will.

“You’re back early,” Aoi says, flipping on the light and idly passing by the kitchen table, throwing her work jacket over the back of a chair. She pauses for a moment to flip through the mail that’s been left there, all addressed to her but none of it particularly interesting.

“Well,” comes the reply from the living room, “thing went very smoothly at work. My clients can be a bit troublesome with their demands, but this time they provided the transportation. They seemed like they were used to this.”

Aoi hums. She takes it back. There  _ is  _ one letter of note, a personal request for her presence at a job hidden in with the bills and advertisements. These kinds of things make their way here instead of to the office, sometimes. She’ll have to take a look at it later. “Isn’t that a bad sign? You don’t want to get scammed.”

“Not necessarily. I’m on good terms with the couriers they hired. I trust their judgement.”

“So the painting is on its way back to its proper owners?” Aoi asks, leaving the letter on the table and following the voice beckoning from the living room. The moment she steps over the threshold, into view of the couch, Ema smiles at her. Her hair is pulled up into a loose, drying bun and she’s changed into lounge clothes that fall loose about her shoulders. Anyone that looks at her now wouldn’t associate her for a second with the mysterious phantom thief Ghost Girl, though Aoi thinks she’s beautiful either way.

Takeout containers litter the coffee table, filled with various meats and vegetables and finger foods. On her way to the couch, Aoi picks up a spring roll and devours it in two quick bites.

“The painting is on its way back,” Ema confirms, and Aoi lets out a long sigh of relief. She falls onto the couch beside Ema, forcing the other woman to slide over to accommodate her. Still, she doesn’t move too far, allowing Aoi to sink into her side instead.

“Good,” Aoi says, happy to finally be off her feet after a long day of good work. It’s hard enough for Aoi to do her job when she’s legitimately protecting something. It’s much harder when she has to both accommodate Ema’s showy plans and act the part of an esteemed security guard doing her job.

“And it’s all thanks to you,” Ema says a little teasingly as she presses a kiss to Aoi’s temple. 

“You’d never steal anything without me,” Aoi mutters back without any bite to it.

“I stole your heart,” Ema says, and Aoi tilts her head to look up at her, a little glimmer of a challenge in her eyes.

“Like I said,” Aoi repeats, “you’d never steal anything without me.”

“Hmm,” Ema hums, leaning forwards to grab one of the takeout containers full of fried rice, “I don’t know. Should I go out and try to steal someone else’s?”

“Don’t you dare,” Aoi replies, and Ema laughs and feeds her a scoop of rice. The pinnacle of romance, Aoi thinks, rolling her eyes but accepting the food anyway.

“Thank you for tonight, Aoi,” Ema says, and Aoi smiles at her after she swallows. She has that look in her eyes, the one from the early days, when they really had been rivals, the studious guard trying to capture the audacious phantom thief. But that had been before Aoi had known that Ema was only doing what was right.

Still, the days of chasing and being chased had been a thrill, and Aoi remembers them just as fondly.

“Thank you, Ema,” she replies, and tilts her head up for a kiss, which Ema indulges. After a moment Aoi pulls back- she’s not getting distracted before she eats and takes a shower- and finishes, a gleam in her eye, “I couldn’t ask for a better partner.”

“I couldn’t  _ imagine _ a better one,” Ema counters, and hands her the rice carton. “Now eat. I know that awful man kept you from dinner.”

“Thank you,” Aoi says, and settles herself back into Ema’s side. She’s tired, but she thinks about that letter on the table, a request for help from someone with no power to regain their treasures, and she’s already looking forward to their next job.


End file.
